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This past week's rumor about Joseph Gordon-Levitt taking over as Batman in the Warner Bros. films and appearing in the 2015 Justice League film sparked much online discussion and debate.

As I told you yesterday, the actor's reps have denied the rumor not once but twice now. I don't believe the story is accurate, for a lot of reasons I already explained in those previous articles.

However, another big reason I doubt the rumors is that I think if Warner really wanted to continue Christopher Nolan's Batman world, then there is a much more likely way they'd do it...

I think they would try to bring everyone back for a sequel to TDKR, but Christian Bale probably would turn the offer down -- he’s made it pretty clear that his returning depended on Nolan wanting to make another film. But let’s assume that a lot of the supporting cast, such as Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, did return. If they were able to also convince Joseph Gordon-Levitt to return, he’d surely play the new Batman-in-training, but some major threat would arise that forces Bruce to return to Gotham.

And the obvious choice of threat would be the return of the Joker, who escaped Arkham in the events of The Dark Knight Risesand now demands that the “real” Batman come back to face him again. The Joker would have to create a threat big enough to leave Bruce no alternative, probably involving the Joker capturing John Blake and then also kidnapping Alfred and Gordon -- maybe using an idea loosely adapted from the concept behind Scott Snyder’s ongoing (and brilliant) comic book storyline “Death of the Family,” in which the Joker is attacking all of the people closest to Batman. Not a direct adaptation, but something similar to the Joker’s broad sentiment and plan of targeting everyone around Batman.

So, if Bruce returns in that situation, they’d have to recast the role, and I think someone like Jake Gyllenhaal or Joe Manganiello would be an example of an actor they might consider to step into the role in this scenario. Gyllenhaal was actually one of the two final actors up for the role when Nolan was making Batman Begins, the other of course being Bale, who eventually got the part.

Anyway, Bruce returns to rescue everybody, Blake says that he isn’t really comfortable in the Batman role and wants to create his own symbol and legend -- Nightwing would be the one he’d create, of course -- and he convinces Batman that now that Bruce has found happiness and had some time away from Gotham, he should try to come back to who he really is and serve Gotham as Bruce the philanthropist while serving at night as the one true Batman. Catwoman would also return with him, of course.